It's nearly the end of September already, how did that happen? Midterms begin in just over a week, marking the halfway point in the semester - what?? What I'm trying to say, is that the few times we make it out the farm this semester are refreshing reality checks and reminders that we are not student zombies, mindlessly making our way through each week and regurgitating material back as we go along. Some people call this semester very boring. The fact that we are stuck with all of this material is certainly a bummer, but I at least have a sense of urgency when it comes to clinical pathology, pathology, pharmacology, and to a lesser extent pathology (and then virology just gets to go sit on its own island!). As I go through all of the material, I wonder how the heck I am going to remember even a fraction of this. I worry that I will be super incompetent, that my patients will suffer because of my short comings, and that I will not live up the standards and expectations I have for myself. While the first two most certainly will not be true, standards and expectations are certainly hard to get away from!
Anyhow, today was a farm day. When we are hot and sweating like crazy, we must remember that we are in a nice beautiful climate and not freezing to death on some farm in the dead of winter! That can be hard to keep in perspective! Today's lab topic was Bovine GI Exams. This included a conversation and thorough examination of cow mouths. For those of you who don't know, cows produce A LOT of saliva day. Way more than you and I, and way more than a horse. This means there is plenty of sliminess to go around when sticking your hands in a cow's mouth! How the heck do you do that?? Well, as it turns out, cows don't like their front area being examined. They'd much prefer you stick your arm in for a cozy rectal exam than touch their faces and mouths. As cows go, our VTH cows are a lovely and fairly cooperative bunch. They're used to being poked and prodded by students, and while they'd much rather eat their hearts out, they'll fairly patiently put up with being in stocks for a couple hours.
We started off our oral exams by looking at their teeth and aging our small group. Grab the nostrils and roll the bottom lip down! Some were more cooperative than others. #92 is a very sweet cow, and as soon as you stick your fingers in her nose, she very compliantly lifts her head and shows her lower incisors (no top front teeth for cows!). She also very patiently and easily lets you open her mouth. Cows have an empty space (the diastema) on either side of their mouths that contains no teeth. Just tickle the hard palate and open wide she will! You can even reach in and grab the tongue if you feel so inclined. So what on earth are we looking for? Ulcers, vesicles, petichiae, foreign bodies, loose teeth, etc. You can insert a speculum if you desire a better glimpse at the oral cavity. A few of my classmates practiced "pilling" a cow. To anyone who has ever tried to do this with their pet and struggled, now imagine doing it with a 1000lb animal ;). Just like we have little "pill poppers" for dogs and cats, we have a "balling gun" for cows. Its a large plastic tube with a cup on the end for the pill and a plunger to shoot the pill out when you've successfully inserted the balling gun all the way back in the cow's mouth. Easier said than done for sure! It took 3 tries, but our cow finally got her "bolus," a probiotic tablet.
Next stop for us was inserting a tube down a cow's throat to retrieve a rumen sample/give fluids or medications/relieve choke or bloat. This was actually fairly easy, even with some of the cows tossing us around a bit! You start by taking a Frick's speculum and inserting this huge, long, hollow tube all the way to the back of the cow's mouth, so that your hand holding the end is right at the entrance to the mouth. Next you hastily shove a plastic hose through the speculum until it is within the rumen, and then you can proceed to whatever procedure it was you had hoped to achieve. The use of the speculum is to make it easier to insert the tube and to keep the cow from chewing and eating the tube! That would be no good! The cows tolerated this procedure quite well, even with 40 students doing it to them multiple times. Such good cows we have here at SGU! Remember earlier when I said that cows produce A LOT of saliva? Well this process is no exception - sliminess to the maximum! And don't forget esophageal and rumen slime. It just smells awesome! Kidding, kidding, it smells quite terrible! When you have the tube in, you're actually supposed to put your mouth on the end and blow bubbles while someone listens to the rumen to make sure you're actually in the rumen and not the lungs/trachea! I really cannot think of anything more disgusting. UGH. No thank you! Thankfully they didn't make us do that, but ewww!!! You also have to suck on the tube a little to get some rumen juice back for sampling. GROSS. And in case you were wondering, both of our professors had gotten rumen juice in their mouths before.
Last stop today was looking at rumen juice. Measuring pH, looking at the protozoa under a microscope, and doing a methylene blue test to asses rumen health are all part of the process. The protozoa were pretty cool under the microscope, they were swimming around!
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